Designer. Gamer. Storyteller.

Boxes

For our project we originally thought we would work in Columbus circle.

We soon found that Columbus Circle was not conducive for an interactive environment. We did a few mind-maps to determine what kind of people enjoyed the area, and found they were there for short durations, and mostly were introverted and wanted to be left alone.

With this information, we relocated to Central Park where we could work more openly with people who wanted to be in the location for relaxation and leisure.

With this in mind, we crafted our Objective statement.

Our original idea was to create boxes that modified the space, much like a physical AR, however, upon the first prototypes we found that looking out from the box either made the wearer look beyond the picture in the box, or just at them. It could be one or the other, but not both.

We realized we had to change the boxes so that the focus would either be on the box entirely, or on the outside perspective of the box. With that we each created our own boxes.

My first box used quotes from popular fairytales and left them as excerpts. Once going inside the box, the child or adult(more likely) would be able to know where the phrase came from. This caused a lot of adult to child interaction, as the parents read the story to their children.

The jellyfish box was intended to be for taller audiences, but I know children love the feel of dangling things, and so created the jellyfish box to be interactive in a way the others boxes were not. The kids were not expected to put their heads in, the adults were, and the children were meant to spin the box or play with the tassels.

Weaknesses:

For the storybook box, if I had more time I could have devoted one box to each story and told a fuller story that was more interactive. Possibly three, and used an abridged but fuller version of each story.

For the jellyfish, it was constantly breaking due to the tape I used and the force the children used. So I would attach it with knots and drilled holes and use ribbon instead of string both for beauty and strength.

We had an initially tough time deciding on our idea, but we realized that we really wanted a tactile experience and when Lucien suggested a cube we each contributed to it in our own way. The toughest part was deciding an idea and managing to compromise with such strong personalities. By giving parameters but otherwise having creative freedom, we allowed each person’s dignity to be respected.

Our project evolved when we realized we could not successfully augment reality due to depth perception without sacrificing details, so we evolved it based on user testing (noticing how the kids reacted) and on how we wanted each box to be used/interpreted.

Documentation was very thorough and we kept a respectful distance which allowed us to not anger the audience.

“Titled, The Beginning of the End, the sculpture is comprised of three giant mirrors and has been created by Cuban artist Rachel Valdés Camejo. Starting October 18, the interactive installation will be placed at Broadway Plaza between West 46th and 47th Streets.”

It is more successful at augmenting reality in a clever way using mirrors and using depth perception with the user as opposed to conquering it. The idea of this exhibit is to wrap all of Times Square around you.

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Another cool idea is replacing tolls with LEDS. I think this is cool because it makes people look at the world differently, much like what we wished to accomplish.

I feel both of these are great, and the question I want to know if why they chose such simple things like mirrors and lights to create such an impressive effect. Is simpler better? Then again, with the scale of these projects, is simple a good descriptor? How big does something have to be to change your view? Can it be as small as a box?